Month: April 2015

Financial freedom or financial independence, it goes by many names but I think the one that people think they know it best by is Retirement. Retirement by definition is the act of leaving one’s job and ceasing to work. Most people tend to retire in their later years around 65. This is usually when their pensions mature and old age security or whatever financial programs they have in place are able to be taken advantage of. But is retirement financial freedom? If you could retire earlier, would you?

In my opinion financial freedom is not retirement, it’s the ability to not depend on the pay cheque from a regular job to maintain your desired lifestyle. People seem to want to make Financial Freedom and retirement the same, but they are two different things.Read more

Towards the end of March in 2014 I received some great news at work in the form of a promotion. Fantastic! It came with a nice pay bump, new responsibilities and it also came with a transfer to a different site for a new project. This was a camp only fly-in and fly-out site. Not so fantastic! As you know I had just taken possession of my house just five short months earlier. Now I need to rent it completely, not just the one room.

This transfer took effect immediately. I would be in a camp an hour north of town and would be flying out of an airstrip on one of the work sites. I wouldn’t even have the chance to drop by on my way to the airport to show the house to prospective renters, nor would I be available to deal with any issues that may arise from the renters. My only option was to find a Rental Management company ASAP! Read more

Here’s my starting point for tracking my financial journey of increasing my net worth to a point where I can say I’m financially free. I’m actually many years into the journey already, but there are a lot of improvements to make over the next few years. I’m going make quarterly updates for us to see and discuss my progress on becoming financially independent.Read more

In July 2014 while I was in London with my girlfriend we made a morning trip to a place called the Chislehurst caves. This wasn’t something I had planned on doing on this trip; I didn’t even know about it until she found it on some travel website. Once she showed it to me, we added it to the list. I have gone on cave tours before; ones that required some gear and a guide and others that were set up for walking groups like these ones. Both were great times and really interesting.

At £6 each for a walking tour that lasted about an hour lit by old paraffin lanterns, how could you not want to go?

The Chislehurst caves are limestone tunnels that network over 35 kilometers (22 miles for my American friends) of tunnels with thousands of years of history. People believe they date back over 2000 years before the Romans were even in England. One of the things that really intrigue me is that the caves were almost in continuous use for this entire period so there weren’t a lot of artifacts to be found. These tunnels weren’t closed off for a long period of time to be rediscovered like the pyramids or other tombs.Read more

By summer 2013 I was working in the construction industry for two and a half years. I also worked exclusively in northern Alberta in the most booming town in all of Canada, Fort McMurray. There’s a lot criticism about Fort McMurray both good and bad, but it has been nothing but good to me up to this point.

I was in the region for a university work-term during the economic meltdown in 2008. I saw billions of dollars’ worth of projects shutdown almost instantly. But that was 5 years earlier and the town’s housing situation was still recovering. Surely, it couldn’t drop more right?Read more